Backyard beekeepers are urging the city to allow Angelenos to keep hives at home, joining the ranks of cities such as New York and Santa Monica that already permit the practice in residential areas. The Los Angeles City Council is slated to vote Wednesday on whether to ask city officials to draw up a report on allowing beekeeping in residential zones, a possible first step toward permitting backyard beekeeping. Under Los Angeles city codes, beekeeping isn't allowed in residential zones, according to city planning officials.

Beekeepers are urging Los Angeles city leaders to seriously consider allowing backyard beehives. The City Council took action Wednesday to explore whether beekeeping should be allowed in residential zones, asking city staff to report back on the idea. Backyard beekeepers want Los Angeles to join New York, Santa Monica and other cities that allow residents to keep hives at home. Existing Los Angeles city codes do not allow beekeeping in residential zones, according to city planning officials.

After dinner one night in downtown Los Angeles, my waiter offered me a better tip than the one I'd just left him. He and his girlfriend were up to something illegal, he whispered. And he wanted to let me in on it. No, they weren't robbing banks or fleecing senior citizens. They were beekeepers, said Adam Novicki. They tend to a thriving hive of backyard honeybees, which are critical to food supplies. But although we're in the midst of a mysterious national bee decline known as colony collapse, having an apiary in the city of Los Angeles is illegal.

When Max Wong first "outed" herself to her neighbors, she wondered when the police would be knocking on her door. Until then, she had kept her passion a secret. But Wong said most of her Mount Washington neighbors were simply puzzled. Beekeeping? Illegal? In Los Angeles? "It's the yummiest way of breaking the law," said Wong, one of the backyard beekeepers who is pushing for Los Angeles to allow apiaries in residential zones. In a city so proud of its orange trees and urban greenery, "beekeeping should never have been illegal," she said.

Amateur and professional beekeepers are watching with increasing alarm the northward migration of the Africanized honeybee, whose extremely aggressive behavior has earned it the name "killer bee." Inadvertently released in Brazil during a 1956 hybridization experiment, the Africanized bee has worked its way north, taking over colonies of the more docile European bees that are managed by beekeepers to produce honey and pollinate crops.

Face it: We all like honey, but nobody wants to get too cozy with the bees. Pressed with the task of finding a bee-friendly location in urban Orange County, a handful of beekeepers have decided to go where the people aren't. The result has been an unusual partnership with the county that allows beekeepers to rent space for their hives in the more than 30,000-acre wilderness park system for a nominal sum.

With a smoke machine in hand, Bill Lewis removes the cover of a 10-inch-deep wooden box--and a swarm of 16,000 bees comes buzzing out. The key to avoiding stings, he says, is to not make sudden moves that would anger the bees. That's just one of the tricks he has picked up over the past 25 years since he began beekeeping as a Boy Scout in Wisconsin. "I'm addicted to bees--the smells, the sounds," Lewis said. "I don't think my life would be the same without them."

Rob McFarland was in his florally vivacious backyard, tending his vegetable plot, when he noticed some honeybees buzzing around a tree. A few minutes later some bees had become tens of thousands. "The sky was sort of darkened out," he recalled. "It was kind of a presence that I couldn't ignore. " McFarland, a social media entrepreneur and avid gardener, was intrigued by honeybees and aware that hives have been dying from a mysterious cause labeled colony collapse disorder.

Kirk Anderson bought his first honeybees from a Montgomery Ward catalog in 1970. The 3-pound cage came in the mail, and as he opened it and fed the bees sugar water, his lifelong passion with Apis mellifera began. Nearly 40 years later, Anderson, 61, calls himself an urban beekeeper, and he cares passionately enough about bees that he does house-call rescues throughout Los Angeles County. Anderson gets 20 calls a week.

Roger Alfred Morse, 72, who turned a childhood interest in beekeeping into an encyclopedic knowledge that made him a highly regarded apiculturist. An entomology professor at Cornell University for more than 40 years, Morse was also a prolific author. His "The Complete Guide to Beekeeping" is one of the definitive works on the subject. He was born in Saugerties, N.Y.

Backyard beekeepers are urging the city to allow Angelenos to keep hives at home, joining the ranks of cities such as New York and Santa Monica that already permit the practice in residential areas. The Los Angeles City Council is slated to vote Wednesday on whether to ask city officials to draw up a report on allowing beekeeping in residential zones, a possible first step toward permitting backyard beekeeping. Under Los Angeles city codes, beekeeping isn't allowed in residential zones, according to city planning officials.

The Los Angeles City Council took its first step Wednesday to explore whether beekeeping should be allowed in residential zones, asking city staff to report back on the idea. Backyard beekeepers want Los Angeles to join New York, Santa Monica and other cities that allow residents to keep hives at home. Existing Los Angeles city codes do not allow beekeeping in residential zones, according to city planning officials. Beekeeping has nonetheless blossomed among Angelenos worried about the health of honeybees and devoted to urban farming.

Los Angeles is honeybee heaven. The warm Southern California climate and long growing seasons provide year-round food for bees. The city's trees, flowers and flora are largely free of pesticides. It's the perfect place for backyard beekeeping - except that beekeeping is not legal here. That could soon change. A group of bee advocates and neighborhood councils has been lobbying the City Council to expressly allow beekeeping on single-family residential lots. Current law permits it only in areas zoned for agriculture.

Roxana Jullapat, the pastry chef at Cooks County restaurant in West Hollywood, drizzles a spoonful of amber honey over a piece of honey-fig-walnut cake with roasted figs and burnt-honey ice cream. The honey she uses for the dessert, according to her menu, is Silver Lake honey, which, she says, often prompts the question from customers: "Are the bees hipsters who hang out at Intelligentsia drinking coffee and wearing skinny jeans?" Actually, they're honey bees who reside on an east Silver Lake hill in the backyard of Amy Seidenwurm and Russell Bates, drinking the nectar of the flowers of lavender, California buckwheat, sage, jasmine and eucalyptus, fig and citrus trees.

Rob McFarland was in his florally vivacious backyard, tending his vegetable plot, when he noticed some honeybees buzzing around a tree. A few minutes later some bees had become tens of thousands. "The sky was sort of darkened out," he recalled. "It was kind of a presence that I couldn't ignore. " McFarland, a social media entrepreneur and avid gardener, was intrigued by honeybees and aware that hives have been dying from a mysterious cause labeled colony collapse disorder.

After dinner one night in downtown Los Angeles, my waiter offered me a better tip than the one I'd just left him. He and his girlfriend were up to something illegal, he whispered. And he wanted to let me in on it. No, they weren't robbing banks or fleecing senior citizens. They were beekeepers, said Adam Novicki. They tend to a thriving hive of backyard honeybees, which are critical to food supplies. But although we're in the midst of a mysterious national bee decline known as colony collapse, having an apiary in the city of Los Angeles is illegal.

Colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon in which honeybees vanish from their hives and never return, might be a lesser-known issue than climate change, but it's one that's arguably more critical. As honeybees pollinate — and thus, make possible — a reported 40% of our food supply, the startling loss of millions of bee colonies in the U.S. alone has caused a serious change in the ancient relationship between man and bee. Director Taggart Siegel examines this startling crisis in the vital documentary "Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?"

Commercial bee colonies have popped up illegally in Lake Forest in what beekeepers say is becoming a common ploy by hive owners hard-pressed to find homes for their bees. Lake Forest officials discovered two colonies, with hundreds of hives, in recent weeks after neighbors called to complain. One was in a public park and has been removed by the owner; the other, owned by the same man, is on commercial property whose managers say they have had repeated problems with the beekeeper.

November 20, 2011 | By Rosemary McClure, Special to the Los Angeles Times

- Thanksgiving dinner guests at Carmel Valley Ranch can expect the Central California resort to serve a honey of a meal. The great bird will be basted to a rich golden brown in a glaze of honey, apple cider and butter. And there will be honey corn muffins and an elegant ice cream that's a delicate mix of honey scented with lavender. Guests can give thanks for these sweet dishes to the bees of Monterey Peninsula, most specifically the 70,000 Italian bees of Carmel Valley Ranch ( www.carmelvalleyranch.com )

Colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon in which honeybees vanish from their hives and never return, might be a lesser-known issue than climate change, but it's one that's arguably more critical. As honeybees pollinate — and thus, make possible — a reported 40% of our food supply, the startling loss of millions of bee colonies in the U.S. alone has caused a serious change in the ancient relationship between man and bee. Director Taggart Siegel examines this startling crisis in the vital documentary "Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?"